The co-founder of Flagship and one of the most important people behind the MMO Hellgate: London, Bill Roper, is set to join Cryptic Studios, to work on their upcoming superhero powered title, Champions Online, as a design director.

Bill Roper became well known to videogames lovers as one of the key people responsible for the success of Blizzard. There he worked on Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo before becoming vice president of Blizzard North and a director at Blizzard Entertainment. In 2004, Roper decided to set out on his own and he founded Flagship Studios in order to create and publish Hellgate: London, a new breed of MMO.

Hellgate was beset by trouble ever since the official launch. The game was buggy and did not scale well even though most of the gameplay mechanics created by Flagship were solid and interesting. By the time most of the bugs were fixed, few players were interested in getting into the game, which means that subscription numbers came crashing down. Hellgate: London is set to be closed on January 31, 2009.

John Needham, the Chief Executive Officer at Cryptic Studios, said that “Bill brings a ton of creative energy to the Cryptic office and we’re thrilled to have him join our team. His years of gaming and online experience are huge assets to all of our projects, and Bill will assist us in furthering our studio’s vision to create innovative, exciting MMO gameplay”.

Champions Online is a MMO based on a pen and paper game. The idea is to take the basic concept that also powered the Cryptic developed City of Heroes/City of Villains and push it even further. The customization options are set to be staggering, especially as far as superpowers are concerned and the game is set to offer a more complex experience.

Cryptic is also in the early stages of creating a Star Trek MMO.